In a survey of 1,000 TTRPG players in the US, StartPlaying, a tabletop gaming matchup service for professional GMs found that mental health, romance, and friendships featured highly in the social roles that such games help to facilitate.
With 76% of players saying that TTRPGs have helped them process trauma, 28% indicating that they developed attractions with other players outside the game itself, and 75% crediting games with maintaining their real-life friendships, it seems that roleplaying games have functions beyond those of mere entertainment.
34% of gamers said they had played in a campaign organised for mental health, and the majority find gaming stress-relieving. Indeed, 44% said they played games to relieve stress, 41% said that they did so for mental health support, and 31% to process trauma or for emotional growth (there was, presumable, large overlap between those categories, which is why they add up to more than 100%).
Interestingly, the number of people who met close friends through TTRPGs has been increasing over the decades, with those categorised by the study as ‘Boomers’ answering that 65% of them made close friends via their hobby, while 78% of ‘Gen Z’ respondents said the same. Only 5% of people said that RPGs did not help maintain friendships at all.
And when it comes to romance, 44% of respondents dated or or are dating (one assumes that includes marriages) somebody they met through gaming.
Of course, this is only a study of TTRPGs, and doesn’t necessarily indicate anything special about gaming. We don’t know if rock climbers, dog walkers, book clubs, or musicians make more or fewer friends than gamers, or date each other more or less than gamers. It could be that any shared activity has the same effects. Similarly, we don’t know if yoga or swimming are more or less helpful when processing trauma than TTRPGs are. Absent that sort of information it’s hard to put this study into any kind of context–are TTRPGs helpful, or detrimental? Without being able to compare them to alternatives, we don’t know. However, it does present food for thought.
You can check out the full survey results here.
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